Friday, September 26, 2025

​Field note excerpt from research for The Ultraview Effect (forthcoming, May 2026, University of California Press).

4-1-19, Vatican Observatory
At 4pm I did an interview with “Dario,” who described himself as a “secular priest,” meaning that he doesn’t belong to a particular order. He is an expert on the formation of galaxies ... He was trying to explain to me that we can see certain galaxies that are not in our line of sight because of a “lensing” effect where areas with a lot of mass (including a lot of dark matter) bend the light so that we essentially see around a corner. I think I get it… Kind of… He introduced me to the Italian word meraviglia, which means wonder, marvel, surprise, astonishment. He is, however, skeptical about miracles…